“Perhaps there is no need,” Hamar replied, eyeing the mantelshelf which bore ample testimony to a full larder, and glancing at Curtis’s feet which were encased in a pair of new and very shiny boots. (A handsome overcoat that was hanging on the door also attracted his attention; but that he had seen before, and concluded that it had been there on the occasion of his last visit.) “But you had better dry up now, Ed,” he continued somewhat caustically, “or there’ll be no chance of forming the Sorcery Society; it will be dissolved before it’s started.  There’s no need to ask if you’ve tried to carry out instructions as to thoughts, I see it—­in your faces.  I could never have believed one experimental week in badness would have made such a difference to your looks.”

“You told us to try hard!” Kelson murmured, “and naturally we did.  I reckon you’ve done the same by your expression.  I should hardly have known you.”

“It shows pretty clearly,” Curtis said, “what a lot of bad is latent in most people; and that the right circumstances only are needed to bring it out.  Starvation, for instance, is calculated to bring out the evil in any one—­no matter whom.  But what puzzles me, is how we have escaped being caught!”

“That’s a good sign,” Hamar said.  “It bears out what is written in the book.  If you give your whole mind to doing wrong during this trial week you’ll meet with no mishap.  But you must be heart and soul in it.  Hunger made us—­hunger has been our friend.”

“What do you mean?” Curtis said.

“Why,” Hamar replied, “if we hadn’t been well-nigh starving we shouldn’t have been able to carry out the instructions quite so thoroughly.”

“Have you, too, stolen?” Curtis queried.

“I have certainly appropriated a few necessaries,” Hamar said shortly, “but I mean to stop now.  We have higher game to fly at.  Now, with regard to the tests.  I have not been idle I can assure you.  I have secured all the requisites.  The mirror and black cat I—­well, er—­to use a conventionalism that comes in rather handy—­the mirror and cat—­I picked up.  The skull I borrowed from a medical I know—­the moth—­er—­from some one’s private collection—­and the elderberries, hemlock and chemicals I obtained from a drug store man in Battery Street with whom I used to deal.  The moon will be full to-night so that we may as well begin.  Will you come round to my room at eleven-thirty?”

They promised; and Hamar, as he took his departure, again glanced at the handsome fur coat hanging on the door.

He was hardly out of hearing when Curtis looked across at Kelson.  “Do you think he recognised it!” he whispered.  “You may bet he did, and he had only just stolen it himself!  However, it’s his own fault.  He told us to lie and steal, and we’ve done his bidding.”

“We have indeed!” Kelson sighed; “at least you have.  For my part I’d rather be content with food!”

“Well, I needed clothes just as much as food!” Curtis snarled.  “If I went about naked I should only be sent to prison—­that’s the law.  It punishes you for taking clothes, and it punishes you for going without them.  There’s logic for you!”